Secrets of an Insignificant Slytherin
by Snape's Nightie
Summary: Severus realises life will never be fair. Teenage mpreg SSLM nongraphic. Sad but a positive ending or I hope you think so!


Disclaimer: Characters & situations not mine, I'm just playing with them, not making any immoral earnings x

A/N: Warning - the theme of this fic is very sad, but I hope you'll find the ending uplifting. Opinions expressed in this fic belong to the characters and do not necessarily reflect those of the author 

Fifteen year old Severus Snape was feeling upset, bewildered, angry, betrayed and incredulous. But more than that, he was in pain. Those bloody fucking impossible Griffindors had surpassed their own high levels of irresponsibility and almost killed him. He was homicidally furious with Black, Lupin, Potter and Pettigrew for doing this to him, but Dumbledore's insistence on covering up for his precious golden boys just took the cake. A werewolf, an honest-to-Merlin bloodthirsty dark beast had nearly eaten him alive on school property and the old fool had punished him, the innocent victim, just as much as those who had wanted him dead. And worse, he was sworn to absolute secrecy. He couldn't even tell Lucius, and he told Lucius everything.

The last 24 hours since the incident had passed in a kind of blur for Severus. It felt so unreal. Only six other people knew about his near-death experience, and he was expected to just carry on as if nothing had happened. Well, sorry you fucking biased old coot, it's not so easy to forget. He walked around in a daze, the laughter of ignorant students echoing strangely inside his head while his heart would suddenly speed up at the memory of glowing yellow eyes, powerful deadly jaws snapping inches from his face, making him break out in cold sweat. At breakfast, during arithmancy, walking in the corridor, in the bathroom, the panic could strike at any time. He was clearly going mad. And no one cared. Even if someone had been concerned enough to ask what was wrong (which, let's face it, they weren't) he couldn't even tell them.

This was torture, pure and simple. Worse than anything those four idiots had ever come up with before. Since first year he had been used to their daily taunts about his hair, his nose, his skin, his grades, his name, his extra-curricular interests in the dark arts, and more recently, the weight he had gained since Christmas. It wasn't very much, really, he was still far from being fat, and enjoyed pointing out that he was still much more slender than that pathetic lump Pettigrew. He could cope with all that, and gave as good as he got, but now… Now they were destroying his mind, his only decent asset, and Severus could not bear the humiliation.

He had not managed a wink of sleep the previous night. Madam Pomfrey had tutted and refused to give him Dreamless Sleep or any other kind of sedative because she believed he was making 'a needless fuss', and besides, she was too busy cooing over the self-inflicted injuries of that terrible beast, of which she seemed to be so fond. So he had lain awake in the hospital wing, eyes wide and staring, fingers picking at the blankets as he replayed the awful moment over and over.

Well, he would not suffer that again. Sneaking easily into Prof. Wycan's classroom cupboard, he obtained a few ingredients and threw together a simple sleeping potion. For some reason, Somnulus was classed as Dark and therefore illegal, but he paid no heed to unnecessary politically-motivated restrictions, especially as its Light equivalent was far more complicated and required at least eight hours of simmering before use. His trembling hands extinguished the flame beneath the cauldron. Pouring a generous draft into a goblet, he downed the bitter-tasting green liquid and tidied away the evidence, before dashing to his dorm for a night of blessed respite from his memories.

Then, the pain had started. At first it had been nothing more than a small stabbing in his lower abdomen, passing quickly and allowing his exhausted brain to switch off. Then it grew, fighting the sedative effects of the potion to keep him awake, leaving him groggy but in agony, barely able to move and certainly unable to sleep. He must have made some mistake when brewing. Those blasted Griffindors! They had robbed him of his ability to concentrate and made him poison himself. The final victory was theirs. He could not get help from anyone at school, they would find out he had taken an illegal potion, and he would be in expelled for sure. But the pain was so great he was convinced he would die from it. There was only one option. The open portkey from Lucius. This was also illegal, but, being an anytime, anyplace instant escape option, he was unlikely to get caught using it. If he survived, that is.

…….

Lucius had been taking advantage of his father's business trip to Bangkok by having a house party. The 19 year old and a select group of his associates had raided the Manor's wine cellars, and several bottles of ancient shrivelfig brandy later, they were giggling wildly as Bellatrix tried to teach them the actions to the new drinking song Willibald's Wonky Wand. The already silly atmosphere sank even further after Tib Goyle had fallen over one too many times and was laughing so hard he couldn't get up, leading Evan Rosier to try and give a derisive snort. Unfortunately he had just taken a large glug of alcohol and managed to spray the gramophone and all the room's occupants with drink and snot. Everyone was simultaneously screaming, laughing and cursing when Severus popped into the room.

Malfoy sobered instantly on seeing the boy's face coloured a sickly grey and contorted with pain. Clutching pathetically at his stomach he could only slur about "Griffindors", "poison", and "dying", and Lucius immediately yelled to a house-elf to fetch Healer Benson as he swept the writhing Severus into his arms and rushed up the stairs to his bedroom.

Jeremy Benson had been the private physician to the Malfoy family for forty years, and charged them a fortune for his top of the range treatments and his sepulchral discretion. Like his father before him, he had received large sums of Malfoy money for taking care of their medical needs over the years. He had committed squibicide, modified memories, provided gallons of illegal potions, performed voodoo magic and done a hundred other banned and unethical deeds on their instructions, as well as fixing the more usual broken legs and intimate infections. This was a new one, however. After an hour spent treating Lucius' little friend, he summoned the youngest Malfoy into the room.

Severus appeared to be dozing, looking small and fragile in the sumptuous four-poster bed.

"Healer Benson? Is he all right? What happened?"

"Severus suffered a miscarriage."

"A what? I don't understand."

"He was pregnant, but he ingested Somnulus which causes expectant mothers to abort. And fathers, it seems. Male pregnancy is extremely rare as I'm sure you know, it happens about once a century, and he assured me that he had no idea of his condition until now. Obviously he has received quite a shock, and he's very young to be dealing with the enormity of this situation. I would like to contact his parents."

"No! Absolutely not." Lucius had witnessed Snape Senior's temper in the past, the last thing they needed right now was rage, accusations, and the inevitable disowning.

"Well then, we should contact his boyfriend, at least. Do you know the identity of the baby's father?"

When Malfoy hesitated that tiny bit too long, the healer's suspicions were confirmed. His tone softened and he rested a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"I am sorry, Lucius."

…….

Severus awoke next morning disorientated, nauseous and sore, panicking at first when he noticed he was in Lucius' bedroom and not his dormitory.

"What day is it?" he demanded, shaking the sleeping blond man next to him.

"Saturday. It's ok, no one will notice you're not at school."

The younger boy sighed in relief, falling back onto the pillow. Why was he feeling so ill? Then one by one the horrors of the previous few days dawned on his fogged brain. At the first sniffle, Lucius' arms were around him, and he clung on to the embrace for dear life listening to the soothing words as sob after sob shook his aching body.

Lucius had lain awake for hours, not knowing what to think. The heir to the Malfoy name and fortune had been conceived out of wedlock and gestated inside a teenage boy, Severus, his Severus. And then killed. He had almost been a father, and his fascinating little lover could bear children. It was too much to process. Not knowing what else to do, he held Severus as tightly as he could, trying to make sense of the delirious snippets of accusation and loathing. Somehow, it seemed Sirius Black and James Potter had been responsible for this, and Lucius vowed first to himself, then quietly into a feverishly hot ear that they were going to pay dearly for it, on his oath as a wizard.

…….

Severus and Lucius gradually got over their anger and disappointment. It never became an obsession, as there was too much happening to command their attention – for Snape it was school, exams, his potions diploma; for Lucius a tour of Europe and Wizarding America, a position at the Ministry, marriage to Narcissa Black. They remained close, and spoke at least once a week no matter what, but their sexual relationship floundered and failed. Perhaps it would have done anyhow, the age gap and circumstances conspiring against them, but a mutual interest in a certain emergent pureblooded political discussion group kept them on the same path.

Severus had found it difficult to understand the concept of his pregnancy. Before he had even realised it was there, the child was gone, its lifeless little body removed from him whilst unconscious, he had never seen it, and had only an insignificant looking small scar to prove that anything at all had happened that night. Three years later they called Healer Benson to the Manor when Narcissa began foaming at the mouth during a vicious fight with her sister, and almost as an afterthought, Severus enquired after the gender of his baby. Benson looked up at him in calculatingly.

"A girl. About four and a half months. You regret the loss? You were very young to become a father, and there would have been a great deal of interest in a male pregnancy. They would have treated you like a laboratory rat. In the long run, it may have been for the best."

"I agree. Even now I doubt I would make a suitable parent." And he believed it too.

Right until the moment when a radiant Lucius handed him a blanket containing a small, wriggling pink object, which grabbed his finger in its tiny grip and blinked up at him with his father's gorgeous eyes.

"Oh," exclaimed Severus softly. Suddenly he understood. He realised what he had lost. His child, the child of the man he loved had been stolen from him, murdered inside him, and suddenly his heart was breaking and life was even more devastatingly unfair than he had previously imagined. Tears splashed onto Draco's little face, as the enormity of it crashed down upon the young man, six years later.

"He should have a sister, Luc," he gasped out, "A six year old sister to look out for him."

And the worst of it all, which he couldn't tell Lucius or any of his colleagues, was that he was now allied with the very ones who had been responsible, and sworn to protect them, when all he wanted to do was storm over to Godric's Fallow or whatever the infernal place was called and slowly and painfully torture the Quidditch legend, the Posing Prankster, the Werewolf and the Fat Lump until their eyeballs burst for being responsible, and most of all for not even knowing what they had done. Fuck them. All of them. And you too, Dumbledore, you old freak. I hate you. I will always hate you. My dead daughter's little brother is the only thing in this bitch of a world which matters now.

…….

31st October 1981. The night his world turned upside down yet again.

The Dark Lord was gone. Potter was dead. But another unfair stab of misery into his blackened heart from the golden world of the Griffindors.

_Potter's baby lived._

…….

1st September 1985. She would have been there amongst the gaggle of nervous first years. Slytherin? Probably. Or perhaps Ravenclaw. Hell, he didn't care what colour her tie would have been.

…….

1st September 1992. There they were, both unmistakable carbon copies of their fathers, in front of him at the sorting. His precious Draco and that messy-haired abomination of a human being who made Severus' blood boil. Yet he would protect him. He had no choice.

…….

1st July 1999. The Potter brat had his uses, after all. Finally the Dark Lord was defeated, dead.

Unfortunately so was Lucius, and Draco was in exile in Argentina, to receive the Dementors' Kiss if he was ever spotted in Britain again. He had lost both Malfoy children.

…….

15th July 2000. A new millennium, a new life. At forty years and seven months of age, he had handed his resignation to Albus, and finally left his schooldays behind him for good. He owned a small country house, left to him by a distant cousin, and some money saved from 20 years of living frugally and saving his teacher's wage, and the rest of his life ahead of him to use in any way he chose. Total freedom for the first time in his unhappy existence.

Severus already had an idea of what he wanted to do, as it happened. It had formed so gradually, he hardly knew when it had gone from crazy pipedream to actual possibility. Now he was absolutely certain it was what he wanted, and began to make the preparations for putting it into practice. Strolling around the dusty bedrooms of the house, he noted the large, South-facing window in the master suite, deciding it could be rather light and attractive after a bit of restoration and clearing out. This room would do nicely, he decided.

Perfect for the nursery.

…….


End file.
